


Time and Tide

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Post-Sirius in Azkaban, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 20:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5942539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The passing of a loved one is hard to take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time and Tide

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

Today, I will wake up and it will be the earliest I have done so in a long while, though I'm sure I feel more tired than I ever have in my entire life. I will sit for awhile, not thinking, not doing very much at all and it will be the blinding light of dawn that finally snaps me out of my stupor and sends me stumbling out of my bed. As the cheerful rays streams into my room with no apparent sympathy for my mood, I will go through my morning routine just like I always have, except today I will linger in the shower just a little longer, and the clothes I don will be my most somber and my very best.

I will prepare breakfast and go through the motions of eating, choking down bite after bite even though it all tastes like ashes in my mouth. There will be no newspaper in my hands, for I don't think I could handle someone else's misery; nor will I have the brain power required to make sense of the words. And when I find that I can't swallow another morsel without throwing up, I will realize that I have barely eaten a quarter of what I set before myself, and I will push away from the table in disgust, leaving it all behind. That one thing in itself tells me how much I am shaken, for normally I could never stand to leave such a mess and let perfectly good food go to waste. But today is different and I don't think I will be able to summon the ability to care.

Grabbing a coat, because despite the fact that it's been a very warm summer, somehow I feel incredibly cold inside, I will walk to my motorcycle at a fast clip because my emotions are too volatile to even consider apparating. I will grab the bike, maneuvering it onto the streets with harsh movements and settling myself on with even less care. Fumbling with the keys, it will be a few moments before my nerves are settled enough for me to start the engine and pull away, breathing a sigh of relief that I made it this far at all. Soaring through the sky to my destination, the roads below will be virtually deserted, and it is during this time that I won't be able to avoid thinking, thinking and remembering.

As I look back, it will break my heart to realize how little I knew about the one remaining man I called friend. I will remember all those times I saw only what I wanted to see when I looked at him and took his words at face value instead of searching for the deeper meaning in them. I will recall all the instances where I could have strengthened the bonds of friendship between us and instead let it weaken and dissolve, suspicion and deceit clouding the air around us. I will feel shame when I think back to the time I was so careless with him and nearly cost three people their lives. I will picture the loneliness that has perhaps always been present in his eyes and realize suddenly that it frightened me because I wanted to be the one to banish it forever. And I will ask myself why I have only seen it now that it's too late to do anything about it.

I will wonder why I didn't beg for his forgiveness the moment I saw him after Azkaban and then I will remember the unassailable distance in his eyes that shriveled any words I might have spoken on my lips. I will rail at myself for letting him walk away because it was the easier thing to do and because the coldness in his eyes frightened me. I will laugh bitterly at my stupidity for thinking that there would always be another tomorrow for us to settle things, that it could wait. It is only now that he is gone that I realize how much he is a part me, and that the empty spot left with his passing can never be filled.

With a heavy soul, I will file into the church, sitting together with people I have known nearly my entire life, but still feeling the distance of years. I will not speak in the eulogy, for what could I say that would be truly meaningful? I believed once that he was my friend, but that can't be said with any certainty any longer. I didn't know him, not the true him, didn't even grasp the fact that he hid behind a mask of silence, was so alienated from the rest of us until now. I won't be the one to carry his body to its final resting place because I don't deserve that honour, not anymore and maybe not ever.

I could try and blame it all on him, but the cowardly way is no longer mine, and I am willing to own up to it even if I am years too late. It's both of our faults really. He may have been the one to hide, but I let him. He disappeared without a word after the war was finally over, but I probably could have found him easy. It's sad really, that for the first time in so long that the two of us are together again under one roof, it would have to be under these conditions. If only things could have been different.

\+ + +

As if from a distance, I could hear the sympathy and the concern that laced Dumbledore's voice as he gently repeated my name, asking me if I was all right. The letter dropped from my suddenly nerveless fingers as I sank to the floor in a boneless heap, my legs having suddenly turned to jelly. Everything seemed to fade away, the blare of the muggle television, the sounds of a lawnmower being utilized outside. Even Dumbledore's slightly worried voice disappeared, returning only to echo those three fateful words in my suddenly aching skull.

Remus had died.

Images began to flash in my mind, beginning from the first time we met, up to and past this hour, showing me how the next few hellish days would be spent. I could see it all, how I would react, the guilt and anguish that would bury me alive when the numbness faded away. His face, so shuttered and hard, yet still so beautiful appeared beneath my tightly closed lids. This was how I would always remember him, without a smile gracing those expressionless lips, a frightening emptiness filling those gold coloured eyes. It wasn't the type of image I wanted to carry around for the rest of my life, but now it was too late to change that.

I grasped my head in my hands, not wanting to see any of it, but not being able to push it away.

"Sirius!" A fatherly male voice cut through my shock and I turned away, mumbling something to him and shutting myself in my room before Dumbledore could reply. Slowly, I made my way to my bed, wanting to shut out the rest of the world for just a little while. I closed the curtains, and cast a privacy spell around the room, certain that others would try to reach me with meaningless platitudes. My mind was too fragile to deal with any of it, too full with thoughts of a brown- haired werewolf who had always inspired in me feelings that frightened me more than any army of Death Eaters ever could.

I can still remember the relief I felt when he disappeared, so glad that I didn't have to deal with his disquieting presence in my life for a short period. I always intended to look for him one day and deal with the strange relationship between us, but before I knew it weeks had turned into years, and emotions that had once been so important had dulled with distance and age. I was still left with the niggling sensation of dissatisfaction, but that was easy enough to ignore when life kept your days filled and your mind busy. I went for long stretches of time without thinking about him at all and I was glad for that. Thinking of him always did make me feel somewhat nervous. There always seemed to be enough time to do something about him later, but now I see that I waited too long.

I threw myself on the bed, burying my face in my pillow and wishing I could give myself up to the black void of sleep. But there were too many thoughts, too many feelings swirling around in me to ever allow me that escape. Slowly, but inevitably, the tears came, trying to force themselves past my almost inhuman control developed after years in hell. I held them off, not willing to cry for myself, not even for the Remus Lupin I had known. If I did cry, it would be for the one I hadn't known, the one he never let me see. Only with his death could I see the things I had lost and what might have been had I done things just a little bit differently.

The future lay before me, a wide gaping hole, which seemed to have no end. As I faced the utter certainty that Remus would never be in my life again, it was for that which I could no longer stop the tears.


End file.
